"This shows you the devastation tobacco causes to families and to all Floridians," said Tony Welch, Health Department spokesman. "If you realize the No. 1 cause of death is preventable, then that's where we should focus our attention as a health department."

The Health Department study is the state's most extensive analysis of smoking-related deaths in seven years. It examines 1995 mortality data, which shows 31,204 Floridians died of smoking-related disease that year, out of 151,619 deaths overall.

The state study comes even as Florida legislators are being pressured by the nation's leading cigarette companies to repeal a 1994 law used to sue tobacco firms for more than $1 billion in public health costs attributed to smoking.

The law strips the tobacco industry of most legal defenses used by cigarette makers to successfully fight earlier lawsuits by individual smokers.

The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in August in Palm Beach County Circuit Court.

For their part, tobacco industry spokesmen downplayed the study's findings and the advertising campaign touted by the coalition.

"I really don't see any change in their strategy," said John French, a lobbyist for Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest cigarette maker.

Peggy Carter, a spokeswoman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., said Floridians should be equally alarmed by the chilling effect the state's lawsuit may have on all corporations - not only cigarette makers.

"When we dismantle our legal system to get to an industry, everybody ought to be concerned," Carter said.